The invention disclosed herein relates generally to a system and method for facilitating a realty transaction. More specifically, the disclosed invention relates to a system and method for processing financial and other information related to a realty transaction.
Publicly available realty information is useful to aid in marketing realty-related products and services. Public realty information is often located in depositories held and maintained by state and/or local government. The Real Property Assessment Division (“RPAD”) in New York, for example, maintains a compilation of information relating to realties within its jurisdiction. The compiled realty information includes the block and lot number of the property, the owner of the property, and the last known mortgage lendor on the property. However, the RPAD system does not allow the public to conduct comprehensive searching of information and some of its information is incomplete and comprises limited information fields. Furthermore, a user can only search information by block and lot number. For example, RPAD lacks information relating to the percentage of a given property that is vacant, information relating to the owner of the property, information relating to properties in other jurisdictions, etc.
Traditional methods of utilizing publicly available realty information comprised transcribing the information on note cards. Additionally, First American Real Estate Solutions® markets a software product, entitled Win2Data®. The Win2Data software comprises a database of realty information, such as the name of the property owner and mortgage lendor for a given property. However, the Win2Data software does not allow for simultaneous display of multiple records, its searching capabilities are limited, and user access is restricted to the realty information provided with the Win2Data software. The product is limited in its search, sort, presentation, and other processing abilities and is not well suited for on-demand, real-time access to comprehensive realty information.
These and other disadvantages contribute to the absence of an effective system or method for processing financial and other information related to a realty transaction. By way of example, one may consider the situation where a salesperson is using realty information in a database to identify a property owner and “close” the property owner on a telephone deal call to refinance the property. In closing the deal, the social dynamic between the salesperson and the property owner requires the salesperson to be quick with information, arguments, rebuttals, scripts, etc. It would thus be advantageous for the salesperson to be able to simultaneously view and quickly navigate large amounts of information relating to the specific property, property owner, property contact, neighborhood, etc. Existing systems are not equipped for this example scenario. There thus remains a need for a system and method that facilitates on-demand, real-time access to dynamic collections of comprehensive realty information.